The number of online help-wanted ads in Ohio climbed to 151,600 last month, up by 11,500 from September in yet another sign of slow but steady improvement in the economy.

In Ohio, online listings have grown steadily since December, and October’s gain was the largest in the Midwest, according to The Conference Board.

Heath MacAlpine, assistant director for work force at the Montgomery County Department of Job and Family Services, said the growth in online listings coincided with an increase in businesses seeking placement assistance and an increase in hiring.

“We had significant job loss from the beginning of the recession through January,” MacAlpine said. “Since then, however, we’ve had a significant increase in the number of people working in Montgomery County.”

The county added 7,500 jobs and posted gains in every month except August, a county official said Monday.

Still, hiring is nowhere near prerecession levels.

“While we’ve seen improvement, the job market is still tight,” said Heath MacAlpine, assistant director for work force development at the Montgomery County Department of Job and Family Services.

Based on The Conference Board’s measure of supply and demand for jobs posted online, Ohio has one of the tightest job markets in the country.

The Conference Board is an independent, nonprofit business membership and research association. Each month, the association measures the number of new listings and jobs re-posted from the previous month.

While month-to-month readings can vary widely, The Conference Board’s survey has shown steady gains for the past seven months.

The association calculates the supply/demand rate by dividing the number of advertised jobs online by the number of unemployed workers.

Ohio’s rate of 4.22 in October was significantly higher than the national rate of 3.44 and means there were just more than four unemployed workers in the state for every online listing.

Neighboring states Kentucky and Indiana, where online listings were either down or unchanged, fared even worse than Ohio in terms of supply and job demand.

Indiana and Kentucky had October supply/demand rates of 5.06 and 4.64, respectively. By comparison, Mississippi had the highest supply/demand rate at 6.22.

Nationwide, 113,700 listings were added to online job boards last month, following an increase of 59,900 in September. Total listings are up by 1.1 million since the official end of the recession in June 2009 to about 4.4 million.

“In this slow economic recovery, the October rise is welcome news that the trend in labor demand continues to move in a positive direction, albeit at a very moderate pace,” said June Shelp, vice president at The Conference Board.

As in other parts of the country, a surge in demand for health care and technical workers has been largely responsible for gains in online listings in Ohio.

Other job categories showing increased listings were management and computer-related fields.

Meanwhile, demand for office and administrative workers slipped.